I think this discussion is a losing discussion, as history is recast as being strictly only one way. I could speak of the stories I heard on Thursday from a historian down here, but people would instantly discount it. It very much reflects our current times, where all is seen as either white or black, but nothing seen as a shade of gray. Polarization has benefitted no side, in any debate.
Polarization benefits both sides. It just doesn't benefit the truth.
Sometimes one side or the other is on the side of truth, but even then, the other side benefits from the uncertainty. The further they are from that position the greater the relative benefit. If there's even the slightest hint of gray they benefit even more.
Representing the middle is a pure loss. Both sides benefit from the clarity of their positions and the ability to commit. Usually both sides will assume your are on one or the other, and both benefit from that. One side gets a slight advantage from your numbers. The other benefits more from painting you as the enemy who will stop and nothing to destroy you and must be stopped at all costs.
It can be quite lonely and frustrating having any centrist views, for many of the reasons you mention. Many assumptions made merely on the basis of hearing but one view. The hive mentality is two sides of the same coin, but I don't think anyone is incentivized to change it.
Independents are the largest political bloc in the country at over 40% of voters. Partisans are not convincing, they are just loud and have representation.
Everyone knows the ways in which both sides are different, we are frustrated by the ways in which they are the same, and that is valid too. Keep sharing, we’re watching. You’re not alone, we are actually more numerous than them.
Independents are technically unaffiliated, but they often vote for the same party in election after election. They may claim to be put off by partisan rhetoric, but it's usually effective at scaring them away from one party or the other. They may choose not to vote, but it's rare that they are truly centrist.
The "swing voter" has been called a "myth" for well over a decade, e.g.
I don't think it's only a matter of partisans being louder, it's that partisanship is easier. Seeing only one side of an issue is always easier, in the same way that empathizing with only one of two (or more) sides of a dispute is much easier.
The shades of gray are blacks and whites living in unison in many rural parts of the south in the time period in which these pictures were set. They lived together in poverty in many of these rural areas.
The historian I spoke of mentioned this. He could back it up with pictures of them co-mingling extensively.
Is it to say no racism existed in that time period? Hardly. But far too often I've seen it painted that the south is deeply racist to this day. Generally I only tend to hear it from people who have never been. I say this as someone originally from the north.
The south is indeed still deeply racist. I lived in Charleston SC for several years and was exposed to plenty of it. People like Dylan Roof and the McMichael family don't come out of nowhere. Doesn't mean there aren't Black and white people who do get along.
I lived in Georgia for seven years as a brown guy, mostly in Atlanta but also visited a fair amount around the coast and in Douglas, where my buddy used to live. I just got back from a trip to Tybee Island with my white wife and mixed kids. Never encountered any racism from a white person in Georgia.
YMMV. But in my experience, it was much nicer and less alienating to be down there than it is in a major liberal metro area amongst the "good white people."
I had an Indian friend who grew up in Alabama when his parents immigrated. We were both in San Francisco talking to a white guy and he said "Wow, that's must have been horrible growing up there!"
And my friend said "No, actually, I had a wonderful childhood. Never had any issues with racism, everyone was really nice."
There’s a cultural overlap between the American south and at least Bangladesh (and I assume some parts of India) that I appreciate. Small talk, face saving, indirect communication, social roles, expectations about timeliness, meals, hospitality, that I appreciate. (I grew up listening to country music because I guess that’s the closest thing on American radio to the village music my dad likes.)
So you acknowledge the anecdotal evidence but then make the same accusation towards "liberal" cities? As if cities are solely composed of one type of political spectrun?
So the countless accounts of blacks in the south concerning racism mean nothing? I say that as a black person who is in the South and whose family originates from there.
They're saying it's "more complicated than that" as a way to get away from the truth which is the South has always had race and white supremacy as a cornerstone of it's society.
To me its sounding like they are saying "it's more complicated than that" as a way of saying - hey, yeah, racism exists in the south and is probably far more prevalent there than other places in the US, but there is a perception that every community in the south is racist on the whole, and that most or all individuals in the south are raised to be prejudiced.
Well that idea is obviously wrong, and is prejudiced view to have of the south, ironically.
Living together doesn't mean racism doesn't exist. Being originally from the north doesn't mean anything for your argument. The south has exchanged their deep racism with, at first a prejudice against gays, and when that group was too large such that it hurt elections they moved to trans people.
My wife and I were married in Clarksdale, MS, at the Shack Up Inn. We had several people of color in our wedding. While were told in no uncertain terms to avoid the local haunts, our party didn't.
The shades of gray are that slavery hasn’t been a thing for 150 years and nobody in the south today, or even when those pictures were taken, had anything to do with it. Racism, meanwhile, is universal everywhere that different people live alongside each other. So pinning that uniquely on the south is a shade of gray too.
> The shades of gray are that slavery hasn’t been a thing for 150 years and nobody in the south today, or even when those pictures were taken, had anything to do with it. Racism, meanwhile, is universal everywhere that different people live alongside each other.
The American south is unquestionably better today than, say, the 1950s or 60s. But as a child I lived for a few years in the Deep South (specifically, east Texas) in the early 60s, and then again for a few more years (northwest Florida) in the late 60s, due to my dad's duty-station transfers. It was very racist — and changes in culture can often be slow.
A new New York Review of Books piece reviews a book that studies some of the ~1,000 racist murders — largely unpunished — that took place in the South between 1930 and 1970, in the teeth of federal Reconstruction-era legislation intended to protect Blacks. The piece brought to mind a tweet by an anonymous Army officer from awhile back: "[General] Sherman should have mowed the South like a lawn. With multiple passes." (Quoted from memory and so might be a bit off.)
People forget that things like federal monitoring of elections weren’t limited to the South. Places like NYC and Boston were and in some ways still are very inhospitable to black people.
Slavery was a tool of control. Explicit control of the enslaved people and implicit control of the poor whites and others on the fringe of society. The intersection of race, class and poverty paints a picture that is complex.
